Jurassic Prison Keeper
by Shinsei Tonbo
Summary: It was something no child should really ever have to do, burying their heart where no one would find it. Burying their heart so they could never fall in love, never be hurt. But John did it, he hid it to the point where it was lost until Sherlock found it


When John was young he watched as his parents fought, peaking through the crack in the door of the closet he was hiding in with Harry. He watched as his Father hit and kicked and threw things at his Mummy until one day, when he was seven and Harry four, his Father went for a knife.

That was the first time John Watson had killed someone.

He doesn't remember much about the Day, just flashes of screaming and plates and glasses breaking as his Father decided he had to punish his Mummy for some imagined slight. But the memory of realizing he'd taken the knife his father had dropped, of the slight recollection barreling into his legs and proceeding to stab him with it instead, is forever stuck in his mind. He remembers the glassy faraway look in his Father's eyes and the slick red warmth on his hands that was also seeping into his jammies below him, the tears dripping from his face as he sobbed still saying _'Stop it! Stop hurting Mummy!'_ over and over as Harry kept wailing in the closet and his Mummy was broken and hysterical on the floor behind him.

The Police showed up not long after that.

They made him see a psychiatrist to make sure he was alright for a few years after until they were sure he wasn't going to be the next serial killer.

And for the most part he was, alright that is.

But that night he'd vowed to himself to never love anyone, not when it caused so much pain. When they were allowed back home and the mess was cleaned up he went outside, long past his bedtime and after both Mummy and Harry were sleeping, and took the stuffed dinosaur he'd had for as long as his memory existed and stared at it for a while, realizing what he must be doing was huge, even for a little boy.

He steeled himself and dug a hole behind the old tree and there he buried his heart with his stuffed dinosaur to protect it.

After that he lived through life caring but never making any true attachments, always dating but never settling, never really loving.

He went to medical school so he could help people, so he could try and fix the ones who'd left their hearts out to be trampled on but horrid people who just like to hurt. He watched for signs like those of his own childhood and helped them as best as he could, making sure they could tell he knew and understood, that his door was always open. He even had a few kids tell him who had really broken them.

He was shocked when they allowed him to join the Army, though, he realized long after the fact, this was because the medical corps only got to use a weapon in self-defense. They knew about his history and they stilled allowed him to fight and help those oppressed in Afghanistan.

He'd never felt more useful or more like this was what he was meant to do.

Then he was shot.

Ella didn't have all of his records and for that he was supremely thankful—he'd didn't want to talk about what happened with his Father, ever again.

But then it happened. He met Sherlock and after only a few days, running and killing the killer cabbie, he felt it. That lurch in his chest of his heart trying to connect to something, _someone,_ again after he'd closed off, lost that ability almost two decades ago.

And it hurt. It hurt as he listened to Sherlock be strangled as he waited impatiently outside and as he watched him be enthralled by the puzzles that came with the pips.

It hurt because his little dinosaur had grown weary and let his heart wander about lost until it attached itself to this brilliant socially awkward man who made no tries to fit in with society.

It hurt because he knew he loved this man and love only ever ended in pain.

Being taken by Moriarty, watching Sherlock's face as it went from shock to horror as he realized what had happened hurt.

And despite the explosion and the clean up and Mycroft looking down his nose at them he also learned something. Love hurts, yes.

But when it's real, when two people really love each other, the other's love sooths the pain it causes.

That is when John Watson discovered that Love didn't hurt that much after all.


End file.
